Dwell

I have gotten my head kicked in the last several weeks.  Do you know those weeks?  Where things are said about you-true or untrue-you don't seem to get much grace or understanding, you can't seem to do anything right or well and as soon as you stand up and turn, you get punched again.  I. Was. Down. It's not really people--for we know the battle isn't flesh and blood- but the Enemy really kicked my legs out from under me.  

I found myself shutting down.  Changing how I was going to respond in areas I had felt passionate about.  Some of my closest friends feared my light had been dimmed.  I was letting my new puppy outside (I know...you're questioning my sanity) and I stood alone and wondered "Am I getting depressed?  What is happening to me?"

I finally began a diagnostic check.  How are my eating habits?  Am I eating too much sugar?  Have I slowed down on exercise?  Do I not want to do things I enjoy?  

I knew where to start physically to check on myself.  But spiritually...where did I land?  For the most part, I listen and read good, sound things.  My focus seemed to be on right things.  At one point,  I listened to a sermon from a church in Texas I like to listen to.  I usually only listen to the lead pastor but for some reason, I didn't turn it off when one of his younger associate pastors spoke that morning.  He spoke about identity--about his profession and his skin tone and his talents.  And he asked what if something happened and he couldn't preach?  Or when he isn't young and cool anymore?  I don't remember anything else he said because the wheels were turning. 

I have said since Scott did that my identity wasn't shaken.  That who I am wasn't in being Scott's wife or my kids mom.  And I mean that.  Scott didn't make me who I am.  Or change me.  He complemented me.  Championed and encouraged me.  But I realized in these rough weeks, that maybe my view of my identity had deviated just a tiny bit. 

Had I started viewing my identity in light of my gifts?  In what I can do for God?  In how He can use me?  And not in Him and Him alone.  Eeek.  It's so closely aligned.  I want to live for Him and serve Him. And those are good things.  But.  What am I made for?  My identity isn't in my gifts, but in the Giver of those gifts.  I am made to know Him and dwell with Him.  He dwells in me.  Dwell--I love that word.  Not visit or vacation there. Not stop by.  It means to live there.  That's it.  That's what I was made for.  To love and know Him and to be known by Him alone.  If He were to take out my voice and my legs which help me speak and do, am I still Lauren?  Can I still please Him?  Absolutely.  If He chooses to use me, great.  And if He uses someone else, great too.  He doesn't need me.  I dwell with Him and walk in obedience.  And that is it.  He does the rest.

I am pulling myself out.  Or rather, He was right beside me all along and has begun to pull and push and reshape.  Sometimes that's painful.  Sometimes it's more simple than we make it.  EYES ON HIM.  EYES ON HIM.  

The Word became flesh and made His dwelling among us. We have seen His glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth. John 1:14

Whoever dwells in the shelter of the Most High will rest in the shadow of the Almighty.  I will say of the Lord, "He is my refuge and my fortress, my God, in whom I trust." Psalm 91:1-2

Both-ness

Both-ness.  The both-ness of God.  The both-ness of grief.  In my head, I have made this word up.  But it's quite possible I'm not the first person to try to coin it.

I had already spoken on Matthew 11 to our team on a small mission trip that morning.  Specifically, the 'take my yoke' part of the ever famous 'my yoke is easy and my burden is light' passage.  That morning with our team left something to be desired, in my opinion.  So a few hours before I was to give the same message again--to our team again but also the men and the staff and volunteers at the mission--I went away to a quiet spot by myself.  And like God often does, he demolished my talk and rewrote it.  As I was walking back, trying to hash out what God had said,  a friend stopped me and I tried to explain--"I think God showed me His both-ness".  

In Matthew 11:28-30, Jesus tells them to come to Him and He will give them rest.  We like that rest part!  'He makes me lie down in green pastures'.  Yes!  I so badly want to lie down! But God showed me in his re-write editing time with me that the very next sentence, just on the other side of the period from rest, was Take My Yoke.  No filler words to separate.  Right there.  Rest. And guidance.  Rest. And discipline.  Rest. And direction.  Direction with a tug---where He goes, I go.  I mean, the reality is, it looks like a headlock, right?  It doesn't look cozy.  Just on the other side of rest. 

And He is both.  Not even one sometimes and another in another circumstance.  Or a different day.  But in the both-ness of this All Powerful God, He is rest and direction simultaneously.  He is rest and guidance AT THE VERY SAME TIME.  It is restful that He guides me.  It is restful that He ought to be who I am in the yoke with, not myself!  

His both-ness is overwhelming sometimes.  Human yet divine.  The sacrifice yet risen.   Freedom yet yielded to Him. It allows me to feel both-ness too.  Sad and hopeful.  Missing and loving.  Strong and scared.  Because He is both, and I am made in His image, sometimes I am both too.

This Easter, so many feelings of both-ness flooded.  We buried Scott on good Friday a year before.  But I got to see the resurrection power of Jesus in so many lives in Mississippi just before Easter this year.  Both-ness.  I think Solomon understood it in Ecclesiastes 3.  A time for everything, sometimes together.  But I want to make sure I keep fighting for the both.  To mourn and dance.  To plant and pull up.  To be silent when it's time and to speak when He says.  I see His both-ness in my kids and our lives.  I see them fighting to believe when they doubt and laugh when they're also sad. I watch them love people when they want to pout and serve when they want to be seen.  God's both-ness--His power and mysteries and invisible qualities are here and alive and moving.  

Where have you seen God's both-ness?  Do you lean in to the rest and the yoke, or just want the good and not the hard from Him?  It's a hard question... some of us feel like we've gotten plenty of difficult and would like a reprieve. But I'll tell you....His nearness and intimacy in the dark and muddy is rich and filling.  I know His grace and sustenance carries me when I feel broken and wanting.  If you don't know Him-or want to understand--let's get coffee.  I want to help you see Him!

One year

Some of you ask me what it's like--trying to understand what I must feel.  It was a weird week.  Friday was a year.  I was told I would dread the days leading up to the year, but then survive.  So I kind of expected that.

What I didn't expect started Monday.  I woke up before my alarm--which isn't normal; I like to sleep!  And when I woke up, I stared at the ceiling with an attack of feelings--I felt tired like I'd been up all night, but I hadn't.  I felt anxious.  My stomach hurt.  And I felt scared.  Scared that he was going to die.  I laid there and stared.  My emotions didn't match the physical feelings.  I didn't feel sad per say.  So what was happening?  I talked myself through the fear first--'Lauren, he died a year ago.  You know that."  Okay... so what's the other stuff?  In a moment of clarity, I thought--"This.  This is exactly how I felt a year ago."  Scared. Anxious. Afraid of what was to come.  It was as if the grief wasn't stored in my emotions but was in my physical body.  It was incredibly strange and foreign to me.  I got myself together and had to get through my Monday.  That feeling too was familiar.  I couldn't give into how I felt, then or now.

Tuesday I woke up and it was similar.  But instead this was a flood of vivid memories of the last several days.  I could see him pursing his lips so I couldn't give him pills and my mom's voice telling me it was time to call hospice.   I could feel his skin and see his face and the faces of people that day.  It was so real, I felt like I was there.  

I showed a house that morning to another widow-about a year ahead of me-and she talked about the vivid memories the week before.  She was trying to warn me, just a few days late.  There isn't a template and I'm not getting much advice on how this is going to play out.  Most days I'm grateful because that would probably annoy me.  No 2 of us is the same.  But!  It is a tiny bit comforting when someone makes you seem normal, at least for a moment. 

Sometimes the Enemy tells me I'm doing it all wrong.  That I should regret and even feel shame for some of those days.  And some days I believe him.  The first 6 months, all I saw flashing across my mind were things I should have done differently and ways I hurt him.  But as I fight through and crazy memories flood, sometimes, in spite of it all, I'm overwhelmed with gratitude and pride in my people.  I can see my boys, waiting on call in the middle of the night, for when I might need them to help me lift him or move him.  They had incredible care and gentleness.  The love and respect oozed out of them, looking straight into the eyes of a man that had always been so strong.  I see my girls hugging him and loving on him instead of feeling awkward because his body felt different and we weren't exactly sure what to do.  

My kids have continued to fight and serve like that this year.  They have made hard, life changing decisions and could use their circumstance as an excuse to just stay put.  They serve their friends and strangers.  They're wrestling out their faith. And as much as I was overwhelmed with some hard pictures in my head this week, these pictures flash too.  It's a strange, contrasting gift.

As I look ahead at year 2--I don't have any strong words.  I have and continue to barely be able to look a week out.  I suppose that's the best place to be--God being in control and Lauren just not. A friend used the word sustain this week and it's been bouncing around in my head.  He sustains me.  It means to strengthen or support physically or mentally.  I have literally felt that this year.  Him holding me up.  His support.  My pastor called this week to encourage me about God's mighty right hand in my life.  I know His mighty hand has sustained me.  And while I still sometimes physically shake my head in disbelief that this is how He wrote this story--I trust Him. 

My soul clings to You; Your right hand upholds me.  Psalm 63:8

Jean shorts

I'm having an exceptionally sad day today.  No real new reason, just kind of short-of-breath-sad.  How can it be almost 9 months since I talked with him?  Since we hashed out a decision together?  Since he told me he loved me?  So I started looking at pictures.  I wanted to remember.  I cried alone in my car.

I came across an engagement picture of sorts and just stared. I wanted to remember and feel being those people.  It's not a real engagement picture because we were in Guatemala and our digital cameras were dead.  I don't even feel old enough to say such ridiculous things like 'digital cameras'.  So we have very few pictures from that trip, but my head is full of memories.  Of what he said and how he smelled.

As I stared, I noticed something I don't recall noticing before.  Jean shorts!  Scott was wearing jean shorts!  I giggled through my tears!  I remember his cargo shorts that trip--because I had reached for gum and he practically had a stroke.  I was not aware he carried a ring around for days in a foreign country!  But jean shorts!  Hilarious!  I'm guessing I got rid of those right after we got married! 

It reminded me there are so many details.  Some I forget and get reminded of in flashes, almost like PTSD.  Some of those are almost mean, they're so sad.  Some make me smile.  Some details I don't notice but someone else does.  My kids must have details and flashes that I don't.  Their view is different.  They see from a different angle.

I remember in Scott's sickest day, we saw things differently too.  I was seeing his humanity differently than he could.  In some ways, his perspective was God's kindness to him because he would have never wanted to know what I was living.  He would have wanted to protect me from that.  I'm grateful he didn't have the foreknowledge 13 years before to protect me from that.  What we would have missed! 

He used to quote Luke 10:23 to me--"Blessed are your eyes for getting to see what you see".  He was pointing out God allowing me to see the fruit of some of my labor--growth and change in people.  People choosing to follow Christ right in front of my eyes.  We don't always get to see the growth of what we water and when we did, he didn't want me to miss it.

As much as I really think parts of this story are stupid right now and I've told God I think He got it wrong a lot of days...I'm grateful to be the person who walked the details with Scott Sterling.  Some silly.  Some extremely hard.  Some infuriating.  Some fulfilling.  Many life changing.  

I'm reminded to keep looking at the details.  I don't avoid the pictures or the memories or the stories in hopes that I won't hurt.  Sometimes I almost force it.  I have the strange luxury of having heard him counsel others-telling them they can't fast forward the process and they have to walk through all of it.  I hear it in his voice, but it's for me now.  He's right.  I have to feel it.  

So I had my moment.  Looked at more pictures.  And am asking God to help me see the details.  See what I missed before.  See what He wants me to see.  I needed a change of perspective.  I'm begging God for it.

The baby changed everything

This season is proving to be difficult.  Like a dark cloud wrapped in everyone around you telling you how hard it's going to be.  And it is, regardless of their foreshadowing.  

I had a moment in November where I wanted to stomp my feet and boycott Christmas.  I didn't want to decorate or bake or be excited.  Honestly, having a 7 year old is enough to force me to drag myself out of that funk.  But in the Lord's kindness, He spoke too.  Real quietly, He said "But that baby changed everything".  

I mean, think about it, it's kind of weird.  We believe God sent his Son, with skin on, and had him come through an actual mama and live on this earth.  We call it "God With Us".  Well, God called it that.  These thoughts almost stopped me in my tracks.  How did that baby change things?  My mind answered...God came to be with us.  Jesus didn't assign his little baby self Kingship--God did!  He came just as was promised much, much before and lived just like it said so that I could know Him!   So that my sin wouldn't separate me any longer--He came to live like a human and take that for me! It's nuts.  But it's true and changing.  Life changing.

And you know what?  That baby changed everything for me.  It changed the way I see death.  It changed the way I live.  Before I lost Scott.  And certainly now.  And the reality is it changed everything for Scott!  What a crazy disservice to my guy to ignore this giant season!  Scott lived and served and loved abundantly well because that baby changed everything for him! And as he slipped from this earth, I knew he was walking into new life because of what the baby grew up to do.  

Now, let me say, this doesn't make us less sad.  In fact, I seem to struggle more, not less.  My flesh is so sad.  My heart hurts and aches. But hope means something because of that baby!   Because I do not wish for this life to mean something eternal and not temporal--I wait for it.  I know it.  I wait expectantly for God to do what He said and promised.  Now and in the future.  Now--that He is with me and has a plan.  That He doesn't waste pain and that He loves me.  Later--that He is coming back and this life is but a mist.  

As I shop and remember and cry and rejoice this season--I literally think, sometimes outloud, "that baby changed everything".  And there is peace. 

Love Story Part II

 I've started writing a second love story post approximately 3000 times in my mind.  So many things I want to tell you.

So many great details and important parts of the story happened before he quit dismissing me. Some many years before. I feared I made him sound like a bigger jerk than he was, all the time.  We had many a moment with sparks that we walked away from.  One was in a gym at a basketball game when he was telling me he doesn't get starry eyed about anyone and I told him to get a mirror.  I had a strange confidence some days, that I knew he saw it too.

When he pulled into my driveway one night, maybe to fix something at my house, I knew it was him just by the headlights.  This was a famous night when we talked about all the chatter about these 2 people with chemistry and that he wasn't the fairy tale for me.  I told him he didn't get to tell me what my fairy tale was.  Him being married before or having a kid and not a white picket fence was not my fairy tale deal breaker.  I told him the fairy tale for me was knowing, in any circumstance, room full of people and we aren't joined at the hip, that that guy picked me.  He would later use those words to propose...because he listened all those years before.  He was an excellent listener.  

One of our favorite years of student ministry, church camp ended with a ho down in a barn.  Because where else does magic happen?!?  Pearl snap shirts, jeans and cowboy boots, and teenagers everywhere.  There was a final dance, boys in a circle, girls surrounding.  As the music continued, the 2 circles rotated in opposite directions, like 2 clocks ticking.  Your partner changed with each rotation.  It got to me and Scott, face to face.  I raised my arms to dance, just as the music stopped.  Game over.  He got close to my face and almost whispered "Must be a sign".  And without skipping a beat, I scrunched my brow with ornery eyes and asked innocently "You were looking for one?"  He laughed.  Somewhat stunned.  This might have been one of his favorite stories to tell our kids for the next 13 years.  He liked my spice. 

Sometime in the year, after that camp, and we weren't dating each other but anyone else either....I must have spoken the unspeakable because one of his sisters knew my head was spinning.  She gave the advice to have a "walking away date".  She knew my heart was somewhat held hostage by our friendship at this point and said that if something drastic hadn't changed by the date I choose, that I walk away.  We clarified that it wasn't silly things like his hand brushed mine, but dramatic difference. This was early September, probably right before the moment with the Lord in my car when God told me to trust Him. I went home after that conversation and hung December 31st in a baggie in my shower.  It was my official 'I'm Walking Away' date.  If this crazy, chemistry-filled, friendship didn't change to something significant, I was going to walk away. I spent the next month or so praying that Scott would drive the ship, not me.  I refused to run the show.  And fortunately, I had seen how that had gotten about 120 women nowhere lol. 

So from October 7th and no longer dismissing to October 21st kissing me for the first time, to December 24th telling me he loved me...things had certainly changed.  Significantly.  Needless to say, I never had to walk away.  He never wanted me to get out on a limb by myself.  He didn't want me out ahead, wondering how he felt and where we were going.  And I didn't.  Not only had my car moment with the Lord kept me confident in Him and not in Scott.  But also Scott was so careful with me.  Intentional with his words. 

We only dated from October to March, got engaged in March and were married in May.  But really it was like we dated for years.  With no putting on of airs or trying too hard.  He even told a mutual friend he would never date me at one point, which after wiping away my tears, made me 100% myself.  With a tiny bit of protection of my heart because I knew this guy could really hurt me.

Fortunately, he never did.  And while our marriage and story wasn't perfect, it was pretty stinking close.  The fact that he loved and championed me so well has given me a strange confidence in my heartbreak.  It's given me permission to laugh and be playful because he liked her.  It's give me the gumption to try new things and have new ideas because he believed in her.  He would get starry eyed when I was excited.  It's crazy to me.  I wish I had believed him when he said it when he was here.  I believe him now.  I believe he was often God's word to me.  For me.

If you have a friend who has lost someone they love--a spouse, a child.  Ask them about them.  Let them tell the stories.  Don't say nothing because you're afraid you'll say the wrong thing.  Just ask.  We want to talk about them.  

He quit dismissing me

 "I quit dismissing you day".  I remember it was October 7th because it was the day before Logan's birthday.  We were shopping for her birthday gift, the day before, in true Scott fashion.  We had been friends for years.  Lots of banter and pushing buttons.  Lots of late night ministry conversations.  We spent years watching each other date other people.  One I even thought he might marry and I'd get invited to that wedding.  But the prior year had been different.  No dating anyone else for most of it.  I was in my Master's program, mooching food and cable off of him and Logan.  He was letting me hang around even after KU men's basketball lost and he didn't want to talk to anyone.  Our friendship was definitely changing.  

I remember people, women, trying to get to him by using me.  Because everyone knew I was the chic closest to him.  I knew I was in deep when I was getting set up with a guy and had to tell my friend (email because you know, 2007) and tell her that my heart was tied up elsewhere.  I would later find out he too was avoiding being set up about that same time.

One of the nights that year before, I was probably watching American Idol with Scott and Logan and Scott had cooked dinner.  Pretty sure it might have been one of the last nights he ever cooked dinner. ha  Anyway, I stayed and cleaned up after dinner and I remember driving home, feeling increasingly foolish.  "What am I doing?  I'm over there acting like his wife and I AM NOT his wife!"  I remember which bend of the road I was on heading back to my house in the middle of the night when God said "I'm not asking you to trust him, I'm asking you to trust Me".  It shut me right up.  "okay..." I thought.  No real clue what this would mean but I knew it hadn't been me.

So on October 7th, after some birthday shopping, Scott and I were at a restaurant when he started asking me some direct questions.  One was if I felt safe with him yet.  He was referencing me in my direct way at some point telling him he wasn't safe.  And then he said the famous words: I quit dismissing you.  I know, the most romantic words you've ever heard in your whole life!  Make a card.  Get a tattoo.  But what he was saying is that all the years before of being friends-of saying he wasn't he fairy tale for me-of ignoring what could be--he had finally quit dismissing the idea of me.  He quickly followed that with "Now don't get weird and start acting different". lol 

Somehow it went from October 7th to saying big words to being engaged and then married by May. It's not a lot of time but there are so many great details and stories wrapped up in those months.  So many confirmations and nuggets of God's faithfulness.  He got a little better with his phrases after that-- but I am forever grateful he quit dismissing me. 

6 months-how can it be

Next week will be six months and that has me rattled.  6 months without him.  Half the year.  How did we get here?  How have I lived for half a year in an existence I couldn't have imagined?

The Earth seems to keep spinning and time marches on but I don't want to leave him behind.  It's a very foreign push and pull.  I have a goer, achiever personality that wants to be moving, taking action, with an onward mentality all the time.  Yet I feel like I'm tugging on time wanting to stay where I was.  Wanting us to stay put and be who we were before. 

That's the other tug--am I the same?  How can we be the same people we knew and still be changed and affected by Scott's impact on our lives. There's a rub, a discomfort, that I can't explain. 

I read recently that manna, like what God provided in the wilderness, can literally translate as "What is it?".  For some reason, this resonates so deeply with me.  God is providing, He is dropping sustenance from the sky, but they look at it and wonder "what the heck is this God?"  They eat it.  It fills.  But it is unfamiliar.  Maybe doesn't taste great.  Or just doesn't taste like something they've ever tasted before.  But it meets the needs and fills the bellies.  

I know God is providing for us.  I know He is present and has been along these 6 months.  There have been moments where that has even tasted good. Where we have laughed and remembered well.  Where I can hang out in gratefulness and the overwhelming fill of how fortunate we are to have been the closest people to Scott Sterling.  But there have also been a lot of hard moments where I stood staring out at the ocean--this great creation--and wondered if the Creator had left me.  Wondered if he cared or had a plan at all.  "What is it?--What are you doing here God?  Are you sure you didn't get it wrong?"--these are sometimes the words that roll quickest off my tongue. 

I have found on the hardest days, the Enemy seems to talk loudest and he is always lurking.  He seems to be waiting right outside for me to slip up or have a doubt so he can swoop right in and wreak havoc.  You have to recognize that he's the opponent when he is the kind that kicks you when you're down.  He lies.  He deceives.  He worms his way around what God says and convinces you that God can't possibly have your best interest at heart.  There are days when I literally have to say outloud what I know to be true.  Truth with a capital T.  I will cry out that He never leaves me or forsakes me.  That He calls me by name.  That He has ordained my days.  And if He has ordained my days, he's ordained my kid's days too.  And while our circumstance doesn't change, Truth beats the lies in that moment.  Light always overtakes darkness.  

So as the Earth keeps on spinning like he does. And it can be overwhelming that time is getting away from  us.  One of the best ways I know to remember and honor Scott is in the God that he pointed us to.  That while we miss him in every aspect of our life, that he was pointing us toward how to live this life on purpose and be intentional with our time, even as it marches on.  If my, now seemingly so short time with Scott was a gift, and it was the greatest gift,  then the time now and manna that comes is a gift too.  I have to figure out what this new provision means and how to best use it.  I refuse to let this story be wasted on me.  There was just too much good in my years with Scott to not carry on more of that.  

Riverboat and Time

 Friday was 3 months since Scott's been gone.  3 months!  It has thrown my brain for such a loop.  He's been gone for 3 months--even more of missing him and us than that for me--and it hasn't even been a year since we've known about cancer.  I cannot wrap my mind around that!

A friend asked me the other day if I've always been good with dates.  I haven't.  I've always been more of a landmark-memory-kind of rememberer.  Place and feelings and smells.  I've always remembered where we were and who we were with and been able to guess what year.  I could backtrack and remember moments before we were even dating, when I knew he couldn't possibly not see the chemistry.  Everyone around us could feel it.  I remember a friend's anniversary party and he walked me to my door--not quite dating yet.  I can trace back-15 years ago, 13 years ago, 10 years ago. 

But now I feel a shift--in my mind it looks like the wheel on the front of a riverboat as it changes directions--the water gets rough and white from getting upset.  It's noisy and seems to happen in slow motion.  The scary dates are forward now, starting this week.  The day the phone call came that something was growing in his neck.  The appointment that said 'rare, concerning, aggressive'.  I hate those days.  They're not days I want to celebrate or make a monument out of.  I can feel the water getting jumbled up around me.  It makes me want to pull back.  It makes me feel like my mind is foggy and the sad is different, like I can't see so I should close my eyes and go to bed.  I can feel mad and numb at the exact same time.

These are the days where I will fight for what I know is true.  This week, gratitude is not naturally rising up in me like it has on other surprising days.  But I can choose it.  On Father's Day, one of my boys was talking about things he had learned from Scott and he said "while our time was not near long enough, some people go a lifetime without what I got".  I am choosing to remember how grateful I am for time that I had.  I am gritting my teeth and fighting through the hatred of the days in early July and looking ahead at what God did on so many days on our back porch last summer--hard, tearful conversations.  A husband and wife fighting to be a united front, holding hands, talking through horrific things.  A family hashing out terrible days.  Friends gathering, praying, crying....and forgiveness and grace that led to one of our sons giving their life to Christ.  Scott fought to pray bold prayers out there.  That deck that Scott built with a metal roof for me!  Because he wanted a screened in porch but I didn't and I won.  That's what I choose to remember!  That although I didn't wish for this story and still can't quite fathom why God has written it this way, He was present and near there.   

And He is present and near now.  Even when I don't necessarily feel it.  I go back to 2 Chronicles 20:12 at the end when Jehoshaphat said "we do not know what to do, but our eyes are on you".  This is the passage that Scott clung to often during chemo--"Stand firm, hold your position, and see the salvation of the Lord on your behalf".  (20:17). But it all started with them gathering in fear and setting their faces to seek the Lord.  Standing firm and seeing salvation seems hard-it seems too foggy up ahead.  But I can instinctually cry out "I don't know what to do but my eyes are on you".  The rest is His.  He has to still be who He says He is, even on these hardest days.  Or it's all just up for grabs.  I believe Him and trust. I am setting my face toward Him today. 

13 Years

 Yesterday would have been 13 years married.  It suddenly doesn't sound very long.  But then I look at pictures of those people that dated and we look so young, so different.  The years of friendship before--he was my favorite person for so long.  My first phone call, good or bad--my talk me off the ledger, help me processor, talk about nonsenser for much more than 13 years.  I miss his voice and his advice.  Our collaboration.  I can still feel his scruff on my cheek.  I'm scared to forget.

Really, the anniversary day was launched with days of high emotion prior.  We all walked into Sunday pretty raw.  But my kids made the day a priority--to spend time with me, to do things I wanted. Not because it was just my day, but because that's what Scott would have done.  So we fished and hung out and spent much of the day together.  They were cognizant of my emotions and my heart all weekend.  When theirs are jagged too, they worried about me. 

I tried hard to remember my wedding day.  To remember what I felt like that day.  To remember how he looked at me.  I remember he was so concerned that his haircut was too short.  It makes me laugh now.  It was no different than any other haircut he got for 20 years, but he wanted to look perfect. I remember it rained some that day, but not when it really mattered.  And that it cleared showing pink clouds, the color of pink in our wedding.  I remember how important it was to Scott that although seating was limited, that we invite the students we did ministry with.  One of those "kids" sent me a card this week, remembering our day.  I remember how at peace I was standing in the bridal house with my dad, waiting for my turn.  How it was all I ever wanted, to be so at peace on my wedding day, that I just couldn't wait to get down the aisle.  There were many unknowns.  But if he was the guy wasn't one of them.  

Sometimes the Enemy tells me that the way I believe Scott loved me was like a dream-not real-something I've made up.  And he'll slither in thoughts that in reality, God feels about me quite to the contrary of that love.  It will pop into my mind at the most unexpected time.  I know it isn't true.  The thoughts are so far fetched.  But when the Bible says he came to steal, kill, and destroy-I feel that.  He tries to steal my confidence and joy, he tries to kill my favorite memories and replace them with the hardest moments in vivid detail, and he attempts to destroy any semblance of hanging on that I have. 

I cannot let him.  He doesn't know everything, can't know my thoughts or my heart completely, and I refuse to let him steal from me.  Scott only loved me the way the Lord allowed him.  He only saw me as anything more than broken and sinful because God gave him insight to see what I could be, what my heart meant to do or say, and that I too was chasing the same God.  Only God could write this love story.  Only God can know the hearts of man.  Only God can love us fully.  Me fully.  Only God. 

I hang onto that.  That the hammock of safety I landed in each night that was Scott all these years, is still there in the Lord.  It was really always Him.  The hammock moves and sways with the uncertainty and chaos around me but its still the safe place to lay.  Sometimes its just a place to cry.  Sometimes all I can say is "God, you better be filling in the gaps.  You better still be here".  And He is.  Some days I see it better than others.  But what is faith if not knowing that what I believed to be true before, is still true now when I didn't get what I wanted.  "What's true in the light is still true in the dark" (Rend Collective lyrics, Weep With Me.). And it has to be, or it isn't true at all.

Overwhelming Gratitude

How do you write about things you never knew there were words for?  I know what happened...I know he's gone, I was there and I felt it.  But gosh, gone and died are terrible words to me now.  I know I have to say them-but I've had my mom make a dozen phone calls for me just I can say it a dozen less times.  

6 weeks and it's still so unbelievable.  I've said a thousand times that the last 3 weeks just went so fast-it was like watching a snowball roll down the hill and I almost yielded to the authority of it.  I couldn't stop it and it just got bigger and bigger.  

After the crowd left that Thursday and we planned the service, had the service, the burial--I expected radio silence to be waiting on the other side.  Fortunately, the Lord and you all have been so kind and have not left us. The overwhelming deliveries of gifts, plants and flowers.   I have learned so much about the incredibly creative ways to serve and love those that are hurting because of the way so many have served and loved us. 

How do I survive now?  I'm not even sure I know or have the credits to talk about it yet.  But I can tell you what makes some days bearable.   

• I'm so grateful for the continued calls and texts.  For unexpected mail and gifts-that are encouraging beyond acknowledging the sadness but push me to want to continue to fight through the hard.
• I'm grateful for the UPS store owner who walks around the countertop to hug me.
• I'm grateful for the unexpected check ins from people who you might have thought wouldn't think of you--that overshadow the void of those you thought would. I'm grateful for the inadvertent healing that has happened in some of those relationships- just knowing that they care about me. 
• I'm grateful for almost 13 years of marriage.  A marriage that I loved and didn't deserve.  The gospel doesn't promise marriage at all, let alone one in which you actually like each other.  I'm grateful for how he loved me and am reminded that he was only capable of loving an imperfect person that way because my God loves me that way.  
• I woke up on Mother's Day overwhelmingly grateful that this man allowed me to be the kind of mom that I am.  That he trusted a 25 year old brat with his 14 year old daughter.  That he didn't try to talk me out of wanting babies even though he had a kid.  That he then trusted my discernment about these 5 Peruvian kids enough to at least ask the Lord for his own discernment.  I know so many stories enveloped in fighting and resentment that I just don't have. 
• I'm grateful my kids saw that love.  That the demonstration of selfless commitment, while shorter than any of us wanted, is better than many I've seen for a lot more years!  The boys have joked they'll struggle to get married if they don't look at the girl the way Scott looked at me.  I love that!
• I'm beyond grateful that he was mine at all.  That I got to walk this out with him as his person.  This is really hard, but I wouldn't have changed my answer to him years ago if I had known it would end this way.  We're not supposed to like it here; this is not our home.  And I'm just so happy Scott doesn't have to carry the weight of the world anymore.  

Gratitude is huge because it helps me fight for perspective.  We are really sad.  Like in a way I can't really put words to.  Some days the ache is so heavy.  Sometimes it sneaks up on you.  But nothing is off limits and we talk about him A LOT!   Good things, funny things, things we've learned, how he would have responded.  We talk about it all.  And we find ourselves recognizing that really what he gave us was a picture in skin of how God feels about us, what God would say.  He told me in a hard moment towards the end when talking about our kids "I've given them everything they need".  It annoyed me at the time honestly.  How can that be?  But the reality is, Scott was never going to tell them what job to take or who to marry.  He wasn't going to tell them what their identity is.  He was leading them to the One who made them and would teach them their identity--which way to go, how to hear Him, pointing to His Word and those promises.  He did give them what they would need.  

So this is how we're walking right now.  If you bump into one of us, you may literally bump into some rough feelings.  They're on our sleeves a lot of days. But not forgetting us, not being silent, is the best you can do.  And if you know someone else grieving, my encouragement is to reach out when you think of them.  We're not looking for words of wisdom or solutions--you don't have them.  But knowing you're thinking of someone when everyone has returned to their own lives is huge.  Send the text.  Make the call.  I'll tell you, I do it a lot more because I've experienced the weight of care.  The Bible says "Love covers a multitude of sins".  Thank God!